Napster is coming back!

June 15, 2016

Transcript

Napster is coming back.
With that kind of news you might be asking yourself, what year is it?
I assure you it's in fact 2016.
Music streaming service Rhapsody announced, it will be globally rebranding as Napster in the summer.
Summer.
Rhapsody was already using the Napster name in countries outside of the United States.
You guys remember Napster, right?
It was this amazing music discovery tool.
Created by John Fanning, Shawn Fanning, and Shawn Parker back in 1999.
It allowed you to share your music library with others, and anyone could download anyone else's library.
This was and still is highly illegal.
Napster was basically sued out of existence.
After Napster's bankruptcy, its brand was sold off to Roxio, then Best Buy, and then finally, Rhapsody in December 2011.
Rhapsody's official announcement was quite short.
Here's an excerpt.
Napster is coming.
No changes to your playlists, favorites, albums, and artists.
Same service, same price.
Now Rhapsody announced it had nearly 3.5 million subscribers back in December 2015.
Apple recently announced its Apple Music service passed the 15 million subscriber mark.
Spotify pulls in about 30 million paid subscribers.
With those numbers, it definitely looks like an uphill battle for the new Napster.
Best of luck to you.
That's it for this Tech News update.
I'm Aya Zacktar and you can stay on top of the biggest stories at cnet.com/update.